Supplement A - Report Writing Guide PDF

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how to write a lab report
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Supplement A - Writing Guidelines for Lab Reports (See Chapters 1, 5, & 9 in Pechenik, 2013) Overview Writing is one of the most important skills you will practice and hone at the University of Scranton. You will use it for all of your courses and certainly after your time here. Even if you never write another lab report there will be a time when you need to write a personal statement, cover letter for employment, or a letter to argue a point to someone. All writing has certain basic items-organization, good sources, a major theme and supporting statements to that theme. In different classes there will be different terms and formats used but often when writing you are telling a story to your reader. You want the reader to understand what you are saying, the importance of what you are saying, and to be interested in your writing. If the reader is confused they will lose interest. If the reader is your teacher your grade drops. If the reader is an admissions person you do not get into the program you want. Some of key tips for writing are to sit down and think before you write. For our class your writing will often be in regards to an experiment you did in lab. You will find below the general information for writing a laboratory report that most science faculty will accept. However, as noted, there are variations and you should always check with your instructor in upper level classes in the future. To give you guidance, there will be a checklist of items (that are related to what is stated below) for each specific laboratory report assignment. You should follow those instructions specifically. Lab reports should be double-spaced with page numbers. Full reports should include: Title: write the report and then write the title. The title generally flows from the focus of your paper and conveys the important information about a specific topic (see page 140 of Pechenik). For example, the title should explain what was examined or measured and/or the major findings of the study. Your title page should also include the author’s names, the course, and section. Introduction: Your paper should tell a story about your findings and their importance. Your story needs to have a theme and it needs to have facts that support that theme. Generally you start with the theme of the experiment then give some relevant background information needed for the reader to understand your paper (of course these should be cited in the text and listed in the reference list). Some elements to include: What is the relevance of the experiment? What is your hypothesis? Then list your specific objectives and briefly mention how you plan to carry these objectives out (what type of experiment is it and what organism was used?)

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*Start with “In this study_______”. State the specific issue/question addressed in the paper. Be specific. Use the past tense. Give some background on why the question/issue was studied. Support any statements of fact with a reference that is properly cited. For our class the introduction cannot be more than 1 page long. Materials & Methods: this should include all the details needed for someone to read it and repeat the process. Also describe the data analysis done for the results. Note that this section is not an instruction manual (for example, you don’t need a separate materials list – describe relevant equipment or materials as you are describing the procedures in which they were used). Also, do not include details that aren’t necessary for understanding the methodology. For our class the materials and methods cannot be more than 3 pages long. Results: This section shows the major findings of your study. These are the facts that will support or not support the theme of your story. There is no correct answer so the key is to recognize how your data fits in with the hypothesis. In the Results section you just summarize the results. You should first look at the results that you collected. What does it mean? When organizing think about what your original hypothesis was in regards to this experiment. How can they be organized? In addition are there any other issues worth examining. It is usually worthwhile to produce a summary table of your results particularly if you have a large number of numbers. Without a summary table it might be very daunting to determine any relationships between variables (p. 167). For our class the results cannot be more than 4 pages long (this page limit does not include figures). Figures (graphs, charts, photographs, maps, etc.) Everything else would be a table. Figures are often the best way to display data and reveal trends and relationships between variables in a coherent way. Pictures can be graphs, tables, photographs, or charts. Generally you organize your results with your original hypothesis in mind. If your hypothesis includes a comparison of two situations then you might find that describing the data by comparing the situations makes most sense. Graphs can be scatter plots, histograms or bar graphs. Excel is often used to tabulate data and then put together these various types of graphs. Key characteristics of a good graph:    

Each axis must be labeled and have the units. Any symbol used must be defined. Symbols should be large enough to tell apart. A figure legend or caption is needed for each figure to give an explanation of the figure-what was the experiment leading to this data, what each symbol represents, and any other details necessary to understand the figure. This legend should make the figure self-contained in that someone could read it and know what is going on in the figure without reading the text. Symbol definition can sometimes be located in its own

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box amongst the figure if there is space (p. 170). Legend for a figure should go at bottom of figure, top of table. By conventions the independent variable is plotted on the x-axis and the dependent variable is on the y-axis. Graphs

Graphs are excellent ways to show relationships. If you collect data then graph it you can see if there is a relationship or not, either is a finding. Often to show relationships of variables multiple variables are plotted on the same graph. This allows the reader to quickly compare and contrast the results. It is usually important in this type of graph to connect the various points of the same variable with a line so that it is clear which set of points belongs to which variable (p.176). If the points plotted represent average values then it is important to show the amount of variation usually with adding bars to the points. These are known as error bars that represent the standard error or standard deviation about the mean (p.178). This shows you how much the individual data differs from the averages that were calculated. The smaller the bar length the more likely the differences represent biological meaningful differences. Good vs. Bad Data Generally there is no bad data, however when you first examine your collected data you should look for unusual responses, particularly outliers. These are values that are far from the mean values recorded. These points might be real or the result of experimental problems and not biologically meaningful. This calls for a judgment on your part. In addition you must be aware of values that are not biologically possible. For example if you are recording specific gravity and you have a value below 1.000 then this is impossible and should be eliminated. This decision process should be in your report in the Results section. Text Summary Once you have your data organized into these types of figures it is now much easier to write a summary of the findings. You need to place the figures in order that you will write about them in the text. In the text you want to focus the reader on the key trends shown by your figures. You do not need to mention every data point since you have a figure that shows this but you can summarize the trends indicated by the figure. To refer to the figures in the text use the following format: -Rates of oxygen increased after the 30 minute mark (Figure 1). -Group A reached the maximum value at the 30 minute mark (Figure 2) compared to Group B which reached its maximum 60 minutes following treatment. 3

Two important items: the Results section should be the first section you write. You need this done and organized before you can do the other sections. Secondly, avoid interpreting data in this section; you are reporting the data here only. Discussion: In general you should start the discussion with a brief statement of the expectations or hypothesis for the study in the first paragraph. This is the section where you interpret your data and connect your hypotheses and objectives with your findings. It places your experiment in context with what has been shown previously. In a way you are repeating the objectives you stated in the introduction but now are adding your findings to them and findings reported by others. Do your findings make sense with what has been found out previously and what you expected or are you seeing differences? This is the section where it is important to bring information from outside sources to integrate your findings with them. Sources can include your textbook, your lectures, and outside reading. Better papers will include outside reading. This is a sign of being more inclusive of all the information. The validity of your data is a key factor in making an argument with your data. You should review your validity in this section. Why should your findings be trusted? What are some of the shortfalls (there always are)? Finally given your findings what new hypotheses can you think of and how would you test them. Science is always finding answers and finding more questions to run more experiments. Note: you are not proving, or verifying the truth of an issue. You should use terminology like support or test or describe when talking about your data. For our class the introduction cannot be more than 4 pages long. Reference List/Bibliography: the full citations of all the work that was cited in the text. You cite references to give credit to the people who did the actual work of what you are discussing. In addition you cite studies done by others to assist in the explanation of your data and conclusions. The use of primary sources should be done to give specific information that is provided by that specific paper. Citing within the text In most science writing students will find that instructors want the following as the citation format, (Pechenik, 2013). Give the last name of the author and the year of publication, or (Smith and Jones, 2014), or (Smith et al. 2014) if there are two, or more than two authors. This is the format required in this class. Reference List Next, the reference should be fully presented in the bibliography, usually in alphabetical order. Each scientific journal might have some variation in how they require the citation to look. Note below is the form for Ecology and what we will use for our class. In biology the specific form tends to vary with different journals. Therefore faculty will often want you to use those specifics. You should always check with them.

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For class we will use the following format: Journal Article Smith, TU. , Doe, E.C., and T.H. Dog. 2009. The life of the moth found in the wilds of Scranton. Developmental Biology 277: 100-102. Your Text: Reece, J.B., Urry, L.A., Cain, M.L., Wasserman, S.A., Minorsky, P. V., Jackson, R.B. 2010. Campbell Biology, 9th ed. Pearson Education Inc., CA, (pages you referred to in this case) See Pechenik, p. 76-79. Websites Web site citations are dependent on where the information originally came from so for example. (See Pechenik p.78 and Pechenik's Appendix C). For complete information to handle citations of websites see: http://ia.juniata.edu/citation/cse/cse05.htm From a web page Author. Update date. Document Title. Title of complete work. . Access Date From a journal article: Author. Year. Article title. Journal title volume#(issue#):pages. Database name. . Accessed date. Author : if names given use them. If anonymous, use "[Anonymous}" for author. If an organization, use the name of the organization. Update date: usually given at bottom or top of page. Title: usually in header, footer or in URL. Access Date: when you accessed the page. Reference List for this section Pechenik, Jan A. 2013. Short Guide to Writing about Biology. 8th ed. Pearson Education Inc., CA pp. 69-79, 149-216.

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[CBE] Council of Biology Editors. 2002. Citing Internet Sources in CSE Style. . Accessed 2014 January 15.

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